Mother's Garden: A continuous succession of bloom

Tuesday

Jun 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 24, 2008 at 9:13 AM

Sometimes a garden may be a bower of flowers. At other times just a tiny blossom can cheer the eye and maybe even the soul. It's the sequence of changing form and color, always something new, that makes a real garden different from a static painting of flowers.

Ruth Foster

This is for serious gardeners. Are there times when your garden is paradise, and at other times it's just bare? If so, what you don't have is a continuous succession of bloom, which means something is flowering all the time.

Sometimes a garden may be a bower of flowers. At other times just a tiny blossom can cheer the eye and maybe even the soul. It's the sequence of changing form and color, always something new, that makes a real garden different from a static painting of flowers.

A succession of bloom simply requires plants that bloom sequentially. But it takes some planning to figure it out exactly. When your yard is bare, check your neighbors' yards to see what they have that you don't. Or use a list of plants with blooming dates.

Here is a general overview of the spring flowering sequence in New England. Its opening blush comes in April with magnolia, pear and cherry trees, complemented by daffodils, early tulips, scilla and grape hyacinths.

Underplanting is with early PJM rhododendrons. (Always pick them in bloom. You may not like all the colors.) These will last for several weeks. As they fade, another group dominates: crabapples, dogwood (Cornus florida) and redbud trees. Also ones whose young leaves are red, like Japanese maple, and beech. Azalea vaseyii and early Japanese azalea varieties burst forth, followed soon by exuberant later blooming azaleas.

Large flowered rhododendrons open. Underneath grow late daffodils, late tulips and early perennials. This is the period when the garden is most like paradise, usually in mid May.

It's important to note that there are early, mid-season and late varieties of almost every plant species.

Quickly follows another great burst of new color, rhododendrons, mostly tall and from Asia. Old reliables are Catawbiense album (white), Nova Zembler (red) and Roseum Elegans (lavendar-pink). When they get too big, they can be pruned up into small trees, which is what they are in their native habitat. And of course, it's lilac time as well.

Then, in a grand finale of the succession of bloom, the roses burst forth.

If one started with magnolias in April and a careful plan, there would have been almost 3 months of flowers continuously unfolding. Not easy to do but fun to try.

To plan better, keep a yearly calendar of what's blooming on which date in your yard. And your neighbors' too. Weather is important because the exact dates vary from year to year, but the succession of bloom remains the same.

Check for exposure (sun, shade). Also try to leave enough space for the eventual full size of each tree or shrub. Initially fill in with low growing plants or ones that will be gone in a few years.

When the garden starts to look too green, which it will in July, add some easy annuals to liven things up again.

Ruth S. Foster is a landscape consultant and arborist. More gardening information can be found on her Web site: www.mothersgarden.net. She writes for the Belmont (Mass.) Citizen-Herald.

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